In recent years, due to the diffusion of solar power generation equipment and electric vehicles (hereinafter suitably referred to as EV (Electric Vehicles)) and storage cells and so forth, in addition to the electrical power supplied by power wholesalers, a concept known as VPP (Virtual Power Plant), which effectively utilizes electrical power generated on the power consumer side such as by single-family homes, buildings and commercial facilities, has become widespread.
VPP denotes a concept of integrating a plurality of small-scale private power generation equipment, such as, for example, commercial private power generation equipment and domestic solar power generation equipment, and built-in storage cells of electric vehicles, to exercise control such that the foregoing electrical power sources are like one power plant as it were.
In recent years, VPP wholesalers (hereinafter called aggregators), who establish demand response contracts with a plurality of power consumers (hereinafter simply called consumers) and, in accordance with the demand response needs from power wholesalers and the like, control the charging and discharging of electrical power apparatuses that are capable of storing or generating electric power such as storage cells, electric vehicles, solar power generation equipment, fuel cell power generation equipment and gas power generation equipment which are owned by each consumer, have also appeared.
In the foregoing case, the aggregator suppresses or increases power consumption by acquiring required information such as the capacity and power generation amount of an electrical power apparatus owned by the consumer from each consumer, selecting the required electrical power apparatus needed by the consumer according to the demand response needs from the power wholesaler based on this information, and controlling the operation of the power apparatus.
Note that PTL 1 discloses the fact that attribute information of electric vehicles is collected by an electric vehicle device, the collected attribute information is provided to an aggregation system via an electric vehicle station device, and the available power capacity is predicted based on the attribute information of each electric vehicle.